The Problems feature is useful in situations where you have multiple Tickets that have resulted from the same underlying cause.
Problems represent something that goes wrong and affects several of your Users - for example, a delivery van breakdown, or an email server outage.
You can link the individual Tickets that results from a problem - for example, a customer complaining that their order has not arrived on time as a result of the van breakdown, or a User who calls up to say they can’t access email.
One Problem can result in many Incidents. A Ticket can only be linked to one Problem.
If you can’t see the Problems feature, it may not be enabled on your helpdesk, or your Agent account doesn’t have permission to view it.
In addition, permissions may restrict your ability to create or close problems. Contact your Admins for more details.
Using Problems helps you see at a glance which root causes are generating the most Tickets. If there’s a sudden spike in Tickets, Problems can be helpful to understand what has happened and prioritise what to fix.
You can use a Mass Action to message all the Users affected by a Problem to tell them what’s happening, inform them when the Problem is fixed, resolve all their Tickets at once, etc.
Creating or Linking a Problem
To add a ticket to a Problem or create a Problem, add the property to a ticket from the Ticket Actions menu:
You can either add a ticket to an existing Problem in the list, or Create a new problem.
You can use the search bar to look for existing Problems.
Viewing Problems
To view all Problems in the helpdesk, go to Problems on the Navigation Panel, this will display the total number of open Problems and under this the count of incidents associated with them.
You can also see the closed Problems here but they will not be included as part of the count.
If you click on a Problem in the Navigation Panel, a list of all the connected incident tickets will open in the view panel.
On a Ticket
When a Ticket has been linked to a Problem (i.e. it’s one of the Problem’s Incidents).
The Tickets tab here will let you see the number of and all the Tickets linked to the Problem. If you press View in list this will open a list of all the tickets in table view.
The Properties tab will summarize the Problem and its status.
The count after the Problems link tells you the total number of Incidents for this Problem (including this one). Click on it to view all the Problem’s Incidents in the view panel.
Closing a Problem
When a Problem has been fixed and is no longer generating Incidents, you can mark it closed. This removes it from display in the main area of the Problems section of the nagivation panel.
To close a Problem, hover over it in the Navigation Panel and click Edit:
This will open up a menu, where you have the option to close the Problem:
Closing a Problem does not resolve or otherwise change its Incidents.
It just means you can’t add any more Tickets to the problem. If you want to mark all the Problem’s Tickets resolved the quickest way is to use a Mass Action.
You can still see closed Problems in the lower part of the Problems tab.
Re-opening a Problem
If you need to re-open a Problem, for example, a Problem you thought was fixed turned out not to be, or because you’re tracking an intermittent Problem and you want other Agents to be aware that it’s generating Incidents again.
Hover over the Closed Problem on the Navigation Panel, and then click on Edit then you can change the status back to Open.
Using Mass Actions
You will often want to carry out an action on all the Incidents for a Problem at once. For example, to send an update to all Users, or resolve all the tickets once the Problem has been fixed.
It’s easy to do this using Deskpro Mass Actions.
Here’s how to apply a Mass Action to all the Incidents for a Problem:
Click on the Problem in the navigation panel to display all its Tickets in the view panel.
Click the checkbox at the top left of the list of Tickets to select all the Tickets at once. The Mass Actions window (entitled Apply actions to selections) opens to the right.
Select the action or actions you want to apply: e.g. to resolve every Incident, click Set resolved.
Click Apply at the bottom of the mass Actions window.
You can select more than one action e.g. change the department and select Set Awaiting User.
You can apply a Mass Action to a maximum of 50 Tickets at a time.
Replying with a Mass Action
You can enter a message in the Mass Action reply box to be sent all Users of the selected Tickets.
If you want to personalize the message (e.g. address each User by name), you can use the same variables as you can in Snippets (see Snippet Variables).
Here’s a simple example of how to send a message to all Users affected by a Problem, addressing them each by name.
Select all the Tickets to open the Mass Action window as above.
In the reply box, type “Dear” and then enter the variable to address a User by name:
{{ entity.person.display_name }}.Enter the rest of the message and click Save.
Click Apply to reply to each User. In each email sent, the variable is replaced with the User’s name.
The following variables are available.
Ticket Variables | Value Inserted |
|---|---|
{{ entity.subject }} | subject of ticket |
{{ entity.department.title }} | current department of ticket |
{{ entity.product.title }} | current product of ticket |
{{ entity.department.parent.title }} | parent department of ticket |
{{ entity.brand.name }} | brand the ticket is associated with |
{{ entity.category.title }} | current category of ticket |
{{ entity.workflow.title }} | current workflow stage of ticket |
{{ entity.priority.title }} | current priority of ticket |
{{ entity.id }} | ticket ID number |
{{ entity.ref }} | ticket ref code |
{{ ticket.fieldX }} | display a custom ticket field; replace X with field ID |
{{ ticket.date_created }} | time and date ticket was created e.g. 2014-03-14 11:38:17 |
User Variables | Value Inserted |
|---|---|
{{ entity.person.display_name }} | the full name of the ticket owner |
{{ entity.person.first_name }} | the first name of the ticket owner |
{{ entity.person.last_name }} | the last name of the ticket owner |
{{ entity.person.primary_email.email }} | the email address of the ticket owner |
{{ entity.person.organization.name }} | the organization the ticket owner is a member of in the CRM |
{{ entity.person.organization_position }} | the organization position for the ticket owner, if set in their CRM profile |
{{ ticket.person.fieldX }} | display a custom user field; replace X with field ID |
Agent Variables | Value Inserted |
|---|---|
{{ ticket.display_name }} | the name of currently assigned agent (or override name if set) |
{{ ticket.first_name }} | the first name of the currently assigned agent |
{{ ticket.last_name }} | the last name of the currently assigned agent |
{{ ticket.agent.primary_email.email }} | the email address of the currently assigned agent |
Ask your Admins to find custom field IDs for you.
If you want to write a message with a lot of variables, it may be quicker to create a Snippet so you can pick variables from a list, then reply with that. If you have to send the same message repeatedly due to a recurring problem using a stored Snippet saves you having to retype it every time.
Select all the Tickets to open the Mass Action window as above.
Click Snippets in the reply box of the Mass Action window.
Click Snippet. The Add Snippet window opens.
Enter a title for the Snippet. Enter “Dear” at the top of the reply box.
Click on the 'Ticket' dropdown menu to view the available variables and select User > First Name.
The code
{{ entity.person.first_name }}is inserted. When the Users are emailed, this will be replaced with each User’s first name. Make sure to remove any extra white space outside the{{ }}brackets.Write the rest of your reply.
Click Apply.
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